The PARA method of digital organization

How I use it and how you might find it useful too

Before I started living with my wife, I had two extremes for organizing my room and belongings: either everything was laid out in the open (to find easily, of course) or stored in super-specific places, where I’d spend hours searching when I needed something. It turns out I was doing pretty much the same thing for my digital organizing as well. Either files would be spread all over in Desktop folder, or I would create layers of niche folders to store something, and of course, resort to searching (that is, do an equivalent of ctrl + F to find a file) when I wouldn’t be able to find the specific file. Even in the case where I wasn’t creating the niche folders, it would get overwhelming easily to find something among ~100 folders containing very different kinds of files, and I would fall back on ctrl + F only. For example, my job market paper folder was at the same level as Diwali 2018 pictures (and Diwali 2019 pictures and Diwali 2020 pictures and so on..), so was each folder for each course I have been a Teaching Assistant (TA) for, as was a folder that contains scanned copy of my apartment lease. Over time, I’d start organizing these into folders—like putting all the Diwali pictures into a single folder named 'Diwali pictures.' But without a clear system, clutter would quickly return.

Then, around roughly three years ago, I came across the PARA system of digital organization by Tiago Forte. This system has helped me have a framework of where to store the ever-expanding digital information. In this post, I would go through what is PARA, why I have found it helpful so that you might also want to use parts of it to de-clutter your digital collections.

What is PARA?

PARA stands for Projects (P), Areas (A), Resources (R), and Archive (A): four main classifications to save all our files either on computer or on cloud (such as Google Drive or Dropbox), and even all the notes we may be taking as part of our job or life in general. One of the nice features of this system is its simplicity, there are only four classifications to put everything into. Let's look into each of these.

Projects:

In PARA system, projects include things we are actively working on with a certain objective. For example, 'filing my 2023 taxes' is a project. Projects should have an end date by which they should or will likely be completed. In this example, filing my 2023 taxes is a project which has a natural end date of the deadline by which taxes should be filed. In comparison, something like 'finances' would not count as a project here. You can say that it's a lifelong project which is fair, but according to this classification, we won't put it under Projects folder. Tiago suggests to put all the files related to a project inside that project's specific folder. In this case, I would create a folder "File 2023 taxes" under Projects, and include all the documents that I would need to file my taxes in this folder (such as, instructions booklet to file taxes, my tax document from my employer, interest certificates from banks, a document from Robinhood making me feel bad about all the money I have lost on stocks which went bankrupt etc.)

Storing all necessary information for a project in that project's folder is a key idea that Tiago emphasizes. He refers to it as "organizing by actionability". He elaborates:

When you sit down to work on a graphic design project, for example, you will need all the notes, documents, assets, and other material related to that project all in one place and ready to go. That might seem obvious, yet it is exactly the opposite of what most people do. Most people tend to spread out all the relevant material in a dozen different places that would take them half an hour just to locate.

I, personally, also used to keep information related to a project quite scattered. For example, for my job market paper (the main research paper which we present/are largely interviewed on during Economics job market) during my PhD, I had my drafts of the paper in a separate folder for Drafts where I would keep all my drafts. Similarly, I had a separate folder for Data where I would have all the data, including data related to my job market paper, similarly, a separate folder for all the code I would write, a separate folder for all figures etc. If I were to do it now, I would create one folder for writing my job market paper, which would then have sub-folders related to code, data, drafts, figures inside it.

Areas:

Areas refer to areas of responsibility in work or life, that we are actively monitoring. "An area of responsibility has 1) a standard to be maintained that 2) is continuous over time. In short, projects end, while areas continue indefinitely." So, while filing 2023 taxes is a project, Finances is an area where all your financial information would likely live (for example, copies of all years' tax returns). I also use this folder to store any career promotion related documents. Other examples of folders that could go in Areas include Health, Car, or Home/Apartment.

Resources:

Resources capture material on topics we are interested in or are learning about. For example, one of the folders I have under Resources is "Applied Econometrics" where I store helpful papers related to the subject. Similarly, I try keeping resources related to learning Spanish, which actually started out as a project, but given the progress I was making on it, its completion timeline started seeming further and further away, and I thought it would be better to move it out of Projects.

Archive:

Archive is actually a very useful folder. It is a place for completed projects, for areas that may not be relevant right now, and for resources that would likely not be used in near future (the Spanish language learning is on the verge of making it to Archive). For me, the best use of Archive is to move projects which have been completed. It's a feeling similar to what you get after marking something as done in your to-do list.

This is the system in a nutshell. If you want to dive deeper, and go into the nitty-gritties, Tiago has written an entire book about it (or you can get started with this blog post). I personally, use the system with a sense of flexibility, that is, I don't really spend time on whether something should be an area or a responsibility, as the line between the two seems quite think to me. I am also not very good with always moving things to Archive. I have also not organized all the files I had before I came across the system. That would be quite a heavy lift, so many of the older files continue to be organized the way they were earlier. But even with this flexibility, I still find it very helpful, especially for the new files I am storing since then.

You might also wonder whether organizing files is necessary, given how easy it is to search for them by name or even content, to some extent. If that works for you, that's great. But for me, there are definitely times where I would have a particular file whose name I cannot remember, or any search terms that I can think of don't result in anything. I have also had occasions of having a downloaded paper named c3145.pdf, and of course, had no way to search for it. In the case of physical space organization, it's considered essential that everything should have its place. Marie Kondo, emphasizes this in her book, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up", and more importantly for me, my wife keeps reminding me of this principle in a very gentle manner quite regularly. The principle of 'everything in its place' holds true for digital organization too. For me, PARA helps in getting close to that. That's why if now I am looking for a file, I would try to see if it's related to an active project, area, resource, or something I worked on in the past, and then go look for it in that specific location. There is also the added advantage that you might store some files or notes in a less active project’s folder on the go and then forget about it. When you re-visit that folder some months later to more actively work on that project, you would be thankful to discover that related information there, which is something that would have been challenging with pure search based approach. It’s actually quite similar to how I get surprised to see some of the formal clothes that I own but I had completely forgotten about. I am still able to discover them because they were all stored in one place, ready to be used whenever needed.

Favorites of the month

Song: This song Re Mann by Shreya Ghoshal and Swanand Kirkire, released through Coke Studio India, is really nice. The song starts out with Swanand Kirkire rhyming about stress and mental fatigue, and Shreya’s soothing voice comes with all the calming words and advice. Given the song is written by Swanand Kirkire, lyrics are also spot on. I highly recommend giving it a try.

Movie: I recently watched the show, Angry Young Men, which tells the story of Salim-Javed, the duo who worked on the screenwriting of 24 Hindi films between 1971 and 1987, and 20 of them were big hits. The show is also decent, apart from the last episode, but one of the more discussed movies on the show was Deewaar from 1975. I realized I had never watched it although I still knew most of the famous dialogues from the movie (Aaj mere paas gaadi hai bangla hai, tumhare paas kya hai…, Aaj Khush toh bahut hoge tum.., Main aaj bhi fenke hue paise…). So, after listening to all the praise, I actually watched that movie and it’s pretty good, and it’s not very predictable in contrast to many other movies from this era.

Song: Another Shreya song, Angaaron, has grown on me ever since I heard her sing it live on Indian Idol, and I am listening to it at least 4-5 times per day since then.

Thank you for reading!

Until next time,

Sagar